


Lament

by artvinsky



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-06
Updated: 2012-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 01:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/314379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artvinsky/pseuds/artvinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments during the days after John Marston's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lament

**Author's Note:**

> It skips a fair bit back and forth and I felt that ought to warn whoever reads this. Kind of inspired by the Jack Marston rp-er on tumblr. He does his job well.

He breathed heavily as he flopped down on his creaky bed, his two hands, his arms, his clothes; all of him, stained and covered in dirt, dirt from digging his own father’s grave. His ma, she was the only one he had left, Pa, Uncle Dutch, Uncle Bill, Uncle- they were all gone. She tried to help him with cleaning Pa up; of course, she did. He couldn’t really deny her either, he just needed to get away before she started crying again, before he could join her as they sat next to Pa’s body.

He felt his chest tighten as he looked around the ranch, his grey eyes passing over every single, bloody face of the men that his Pa shot, some were his, others were Uncle’s, but most of them were Pa’s. He walked around the body of a young soldier, almost as young as he was, as he dragged his shovel across the dirt. The soldier’s lifeless eyes stared up at the darkening, dusk sky.

Jack knelt next to the soldier and gently passed a hand over the corpse’s eyes. His own moved to look at the soldier’s bloody uniform. _Private Jacobson_ , embroidered on the soldier’s front pocket. Jack stiffly pulled away from the corpse and scanned the ranch yet again. How many of these bodies, these men, were privates like Jacobson; were young men who had lives ahead of them had they not been so abruptly ended because of their orders to kill a man, his Pa, who tried to desperately leave his life of crime, for his own son? To give _him_ a new life.

Jack closed his eyes and forced himself to walk up to the hill that overlooked Beecher’s Hope, dragging his shovel behind him, as it had been the only place that wasn’t littered with the bodies of men who were only following orders. Uncle’s grave had already been dug, he had been reluctantly buried and his epitaph shakily written. He was the first man who had been mourned for, but there were still others, to Jack it was only Pa who mattered.

He turned over in his bed as he wiped the tears away from his eyes. He could hear Ma crying as quietly as she could in the living room. She probably held his pa’s hat in her hands as she tried to severely get the remnants of his scent from it; dirt, tobacco and dried blood. It didn’t seem very nice but that was what he smelled like for as long as Jack could remember but it was a reminder of home, and now it was slowly disappearing.

He knew that his ma didn’t have much longer either. He saw the way she looked at his pa’s grave when she gave him flowers. The way she sat on their bed with his shirt, his jacket, in her hands clasped tightly; the way she would just stare at the ceiling instead of answering him when he asked if she was alright, if she needed anything. She was never going to be alright after the light disappeared from her eyes that day Pa died.

He turned over and buried his face in his tear-stained pillow. Tears meant not for him but for the dead soldiers, who would’ve meant him no harm under different circumstances, for Uncle, who would’ve lived happily and drunkenly under their household; for his ma, who seemed to have left the same time Pa did, and for Pa, who gave him a life that was immediately taken away the day he was taken away.

He cried, echoing his mother’s in the living room. It began to rain and John Marston’s tearstained epitaph, carefully written, began to darken against the background of Beecher’s Hope.


End file.
